Wedding Series Boxed Set (3 Books in 1) (The Wedding Series) (21 page)

Bette studiously ignored the quirked eyebrow Paul directed at her. "But, Darla -"

She wasn't sure what she was going to say, but it didn't matter, because Darla wasn't listening. "But, nothing. Just say, 'Thank you very much, Paul, I'd love to come to your parents' house for Thanksgiving.' "

Paul looked a hair's-breadth short of laughing as he prompted her, "You heard the lady."

Bette knew when she was licked. Even with the unsettled sensation back in full force, she found it impossible not to smile as she followed orders. "Thank you very much, Paul, I'd love to come to your parents' house for Thanksgiving."

"You're welcome, Bette." He pitched his voice slightly louder. "And thank you, Darla."

"You're welcome," came back the reply.

Paul grinned at Bette, then kissed her hard. Her heart swelled, but so did the trembling in her stomach.

And now she knew what she feared: hope.

THAT SATURDAY SHE
went shopping with Judi for the second time. Paul groused, "You spent the morning working and the afternoon with my kid sister." The first was a familiar complaint, but she suspected her growing friendship with his sister pleased him.

She and Judi found a wonderful dress for the upcoming college formal, and after Judi returned to campus, Bette and Paul occupied the evening by making up for the time apart.

She finally got around to wearing the royal-blue negligee. He took it off her without ripping it. Barely.

The next day, he surprised her by insisting she accompany him to dinner at Mama Artemis's home. Surely he had to realize how people like Ardith and her family would construe his bringing her along . . .

If he hadn't before, he must by now, she thought as she headed into the huge, old-fashioned kitchen to volunteer to help.

The greeting had been warm, interested and arch. In the few minutes from their entrance until Ardith's nephews snared Paul to look at something in the basement, Ardith, her mother, her sister-in-law and even her teenage niece had made it clear they considered Bette and Paul an "item."

Their bluntness had made her a little uncomfortable. Since she'd been too chicken to look at him, she could only imagine how it had made Paul feel - probably like running.

Mama Artemis - a grayer, rounder, no less forceful version of Ardith - and the others shooed her out of the kitchen, where bustling seemed to be the only mode of movement. She was a guest, she was told, she was not to work.

It was just as well. Not only wouldn't she have known what to do, she didn't think she could have kept up.

She tracked down Paul and Ardith's two young nephews in the basement. They were making enough noise that they didn't hear her coming down the wooden stairs. When she got far enough to see them, she sat on the steps and watched.

Taking up nearly half the neat basement, they had a huge, complicated track circling the edges of the biggest piece of plywood she'd ever seen, raised to waist-level by several sawhorses. In addition to the main route, there were smaller loops and shunts. Around the tangle of tracks grew a tidy, thriving community. The downtown sported a railroad station, of course, along with houses, shops, churches and schools. On the outskirts she spotted a few farms.

Amid this imaginary world, Paul Monroe played with as much verve as the two young boys.

Her lips lifted into a smile, but she denied the simultaneous urge to cry. He truly was a kid at heart.

She was very quiet the rest of the night.

BETTE HAD FOUND
a house she wanted to buy, and Paul hated it.

He hated the house.

It wasn't a bad-looking building, but it was all wrong for her. It didn't have character, or charm. And, most of all, it was several towns west of Elmhurst. Another twenty minutes of driving wasn't going to stop him from making the trip, but this distance couldn't be counted in miles.

He hated the process.

Bette worked too damn much as it was, and now she spent all her spare time talking to loan officers and house inspectors. Since he'd made his feelings clear about this house, she didn't talk of her progress to him. He should have felt grateful; instead he felt left out.

He hated the idea.

And that was what really bothered him because he wasn't sure why he hated it.

Now he was driving her to the real estate office to make a bid on the house. It was the last thing he wanted to do, but the alternative was letting her go alone. At least this way, she was in the car next to him, a foot or so away.

He wished he could delay the moment she'd walk into that real estate office and make the move farther away from him. If there were some way . . .

"I think we should go see Jan and Ed."

"Jan and Ed?"

"Robson. And the baby. I haven't seen the kid since the christening. It'll be fun. We'll go pick up some Chinese and take them lunch. It's a perfect day for Chinese."

"Today? Now? I want to be at the real estate office at noon to make the bid."

They had pulled up at a stoplight. He turned to her, reached out to outline that tempting upper lip with his fingertip. "You could call them. From the way you explained it, it's not a firm appointment. Is it?"

"Well, no, not really."

He heard the uncertainty in her voice, and pressed his advantage. "Besides, when I talked to Jan earlier this week, she sounded pretty down. You know, new mother stuff. Feeling like she didn't have any contact with the adult world."

"I guess that can happen when you have a newborn baby."

"She practically begged me to come see her soon," he added.

"I don't know . . ."

"We'll just stop in and say hello."

It didn't take much more for him to persuade her to call the real estate office and tell them she would be in later in the afternoon, although she did give him a pointed look when they arrived nearly an hour later at Jan's with Chinese food in hand to discover the new parents in obviously fine spirits.

"This is great!" Jan said for about the eighth time since they'd settled around the dining room table.

The sideboard sported a baby carrier flanked by an oversize box of disposable diapers and a stack of neatly folded terry sleepers. The food had long since been disposed of, and the conversation had proceeded in comfortable fits and starts, with Edward Robson, Jr. the recurring theme.

"We really should be going now," Bette said for the second time, but with enough regret in her voice that Paul didn't feel guilty for ignoring it.

"You can't leave yet," Jan said. "You have to wait and see Eddy. He should wake up any moment."

She proved a prophet. Practically on the heels of her words came the dissatisfied sounds of a baby waking.

"I'll get him," volunteered Ed before anyone else could react.

Jan's eyes followed the direction her burly husband had gone, then she grinned at Paul and Bette. "He does dote, doesn't he?"

As background to Jan's tales of her husband as a father, the baby's noise intensified, then changed to neutral commentary and finally to small sounds of pleasure.

"Here he is," she announced as Ed appeared at the doorway with the baby, dressed in a minute version of a Chicago Cubs uniform. The baby puckered his brow and smiled at the same time.

"I figured I'd put him in the Cubs uniform in honor of your visit, Paul," Ed explained.

"You gave a newborn baby a baseball uniform?" Bette pretended disgust, but he caught the amusement underneath.

"Sure. Got to start him out right."

Jan nodded as she took the baby. "The Cubs outfit is from Paul and the Bears is from Ed. It's amazing how early the brainwashing starts, and it's so unfair. There's no cute little outfit for brain surgeon or engineer."

Counterpointing their laughter, Ed, Jr. expressed a request.

"Oops, I think it's lunchtime," said Jan. "We're about to find out how Eddy feels about Chinese."

Somehow, as Jan and Bette moved into the living room to be more comfortable, it turned out that this was the best time for Ed to show Paul the deck he'd added to the house.

Paul was relieved. As the two groups parted, he saw Ed cup a tender hand around his son's head, then stroke his wife's cheek, and envy pierced him. Would he ever know that fierce peace he saw in Ed? Would he and Bette ever exchange a look so full of love and understanding? Would he ever watch Bette nurture their child?

It wasn't until they'd exhausted the details of deck construction and returned to the living room to find Jan coaxing bubbles from the baby that one level of his mind bothered to wonder why he'd focused his questions on Bette.

He didn't know the answer; he didn't like the question.

Avoiding the couch where he could have sat next to Bette, he chose an easy chair across from her.

Too much family, that was his problem. Too much happy family and cute baby. A guy could take only so much.

"Here, hold him a minute."

Jan plunked Ed, Jr. into Paul's arms as she walked past where he sat.

"Hey! I don't know how to -"

"Of course you know how to hold a baby. You must be a natural," said Jan with a sly smile as she kept going out of the room, "because you're doing it exactly right."

He glared in the direction she'd headed, but the muscles of his face rearranged as he looked down at the small person dressed in Cubs colors in his arms. A bottom well padded with diapers drooped between where his left arm propped the baby's shoulders and head and his right arm rested under the knees. In his hands, Ed, Jr. wriggled and smiled and felt incredibly alive.

Paul met Bette's deep blue eyes, and felt something slam into him.

Not the gentle warmth that so often seeped into him when they were together, and not the fierce flow of passion she so easily stirred. Something more visceral.

Something as deep as the warmth and as powerful as the passion. And a hell of a lot more disorienting.

A scene from some movie he'd seen flashed into his mind, the vision of an earthquake caught at its peak right along the fault line, where the ground heaved, trembled, then resettled itself into a new, unfamiliar landscape.

And from the look in Bette's eyes, he thought she'd felt it, too. Somehow that was both less - and more - frightening.

Blinking, he looked at his hands and was surprised to see Eddy, still grinning owlishly up at him. Apparently earthquakes didn't rattle the younger set.

Jan came back into the room, and Bette moved restlessly on the couch as if in preparation for leaving; he took all that in, but it seemed distant, not quite real.

Not knowing why, he grinned at the baby in his arms.

"Paul, we really have to leave. Now. Before it's too late."

He caught Jan giving Bette an indecipherable look. At least it was indecipherable to him, but maybe Bette got some meaning out of it, because she flushed, a warm, bright color that made him both more irritable and more eager to have her entirely to himself. And without some damn real estate appointment hanging over their heads.

"Oh, I was hoping you could stay for dinner," said Jan. "Nothing fancy, but it would be fun."

"You heard the lady," said Paul. He couldn't prevent harshness from entering his voice, even if it wasn't entirely fair. "She has a schedule to keep."

Bette glared at him, but said the right, pleasant words of leave-taking to Jan and Ed, with promises to call. He knew she'd keep those promises. To him, she said nothing.

In fact, he realized forty minutes later as they neared the real estate office, she still hadn't said anything to him. He hadn't noticed because he'd been sunk in a dark mood he would have labeled brooding in someone else.

"Turn right at the corner." Her first words since they'd left the Robsons.

He did, and saw the sign for the real estate company. He pulled in to the parking lot and turned off the engine, but made no move to pull the keys from the ignition.

"I'll wait here."

"It may take a while." Her voice was distant and cool, devoid of underlying spice. He wanted to shake her.

"Fine."

"Fine."

She seemed totally unaffected by his mood, getting out of the car and walking into the office with her usual calm. For some reason, that irked him more, and he couldn't for the life of him figure out why.

He turned on the car radio, picking up a college football game, then failing to make sense of a single word.

Why did it bug him so much that she was in there buying a house? He didn't want one himself, although he'd thought it was great when Michael bought the place in Springfield. Despite the long hours and traveling required by his job, Michael was the kind of guy who needed a home.

A thought pricked at him. Was the reason it bothered him that Bette was the kind of woman who needed a home because he wouldn't give her one?

He didn't even have to bother pushing aside the idea, because the real estate office door flew open, and a woman stalked out. Jerky, angry strides brought her to the car almost before he comprehended that this walking emotional storm was Bette.

If her earlier calm had irritated him, her agitation amazed him. She got in the car, pulling the door closed with enough force to shudder the frame.

"Don't you ever say anything about my schedules again." She practically hissed the words, but didn't look at him. "Four hours and forty-five minutes late. I was four hours and forty-five minutes late. I have never been that late in my life."

"Bette . . ." He reached out, but she hitched her shoulder away and he lowered his hand.

She took a deep, slow breath that for a terrifying moment he thought might turn into a sob. The thought of Bette crying turned something sharp and painful inside him.

"They sold the house to someone else."

Her words didn't connect in his mind immediately.

"Your house?"

"Yeah, my house." The bitter sarcasm was worse than her earlier calm.

"A couple looked at the house this morning, and put in an offer at two-thirty - two and a half hours after I had planned to be here making my offer. No inspection, no research, they just sailed in and made an offer. Thirty minutes later, the seller accepted. It's all done. The house is off the market."